Dear friends,
As many of you know, we’ve been on an extended hiatus since early December. Our contributing editor Sarena and I spent the last few months resting, recuperating, and reflecting on the future of the site. And in those few months, we made the decision that after nearly seven years, it’s time to say goodbye to Drizzle.
I started Drizzle in 2016, just a few months after I graduated from college. Back then, Drizzle was just a clunky little blog with a handful of reviews I assumed no one would ever read. But to my surprise, Drizzle grew, and grew, and grew. We started with only forty-three views in our first month. Since then, we’ve accumulated 87,000 views in the lifetime of the site from more than 60,000 unique visitors.
And our community of reviewers expanded, too. In 2017, I brought on a small team of contributing writers to help me create content: the wonderful Leonora Simonovis and Michelle Mitchell-Foust. And in 2020, we grew again — this time adding Sarena Brown, a dedicated and thoughtful contributing editor who was the catalyst behind our summer book club, to the team.
Since our humble beginnings, sixty-five reviewers have given us the honor of publishing their work, many of whom have become close friends. We’ve shared hundreds of pieces, from book reviews to interviews, reading lists, essays, comics, diaries, and general musings. Drizzle became more than I ever imagined it would. It became a community.
In a recent email, one of our long-time reviewers summed up our work more eloquently than I ever could: “I hope you know that you created a meaningful, important space in the world of books. The works of underrepresented authors found a place that celebrated their works by providing deeply considered reviews and commentaries. Newly emerging writers, like me, also found a warm and wonderful home…”
We are so grateful to have been a home for writers and readers for the better part of a decade. But now, Sarena and I are ready to take the energy we have so lovingly put into this site and put it elsewhere. Where? To be honest, we aren’t sure yet. But we are both excited to give ourselves space and time to find out what’s next.
While this is goodbye from Drizzle, it is certainly not goodbye to the wonderful connections we’ve made along the way. If you’d like to say hello, you can still send us a note at drizzlereview@gmail.com.
Until then, happy reading!
Rebecca Valley, editor-in-chief